


Down the Rabbit Hole

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Injury Recovery, Kidnapping, Loss of Trust, Physical Abuse, Psychological Drama, Psychological Torture, Recovery, Rescue, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 07:44:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3166964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parker is taken by an underworld figure with the intent of breaking her to his purposes.  When he fails, it falls to Nate to bring her back from the depths of her damaged mind so he can bring her home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down the Rabbit Hole

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sirenofodysseus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirenofodysseus/gifts).



> You are most definitely not a horrible person, sirenofodysseus - torture fic is my secret love. The challenge, of course, is writing it so that it hits you right in the gut without going so over the top that you can't take it seriously.

_”Be a good girl…or be a better thief.”_

In the end she’d been neither. Memory of Duquesne’s hands on her flesh blurred with memory of _that_ foster father, the one who had convinced her with words and actions that there was something broken in her that was never going to fit with other people.

 _Orange fits…orange fits with red…_ She was red. She had always been red as far back as she could remember. _Blood filling her mouth…staining her skin…soaking into her soul… You are a tool – nothing more. In the right hands you can accomplish anything._

She spoke a single word the entire time she was lost to the darkness. His name – the name of the one who had first brought her out of the shadows, who’d shown her that she wasn’t really broken, just different. He’d given her hearth and home and friends. He’d shown her love, even though it was still a word she couldn’t speak out loud.

 _Nate…_ He would save her. He knew she didn’t belong here in the darkness, not anymore. Eliot might be his hands, Hardison his eyes, Sophie his heart, but it would be Nate’s word – Nate’s faith – that brought her home.

The demon spent twenty-five days, three hours and forty-seven minutes trying to reshape her to his purposes. When all was said and done he had nothing to show for his efforts but the shadow of a girl who had once been the greatest thief the world had ever known.  
********************************  
The only thing they’d all agreed on was that Hardison couldn’t be the one to go. They’d watched the hacker die over and over in a million tiny ways each time the clock swept midnight and a new day dawned with them no closer to finding Parker.

The idea of their Parker in a psychiatric hospital, minimally responsive, prone to violent outbursts against herself and others – it didn’t bear thinking about.

A mastermind didn’t have that luxury. Nate didn’t have that luxury. He’d never said the words out loud, but in his heart he’d promised Parker she’d be safe with them. He’d done a tour in a psychiatric hospital when he was in seminary with thoughts of being a priest, but they hadn’t let him near any of the serious cases. He was too young, too inexperienced, to look into the face of that much damage and survive. It was on him to fix this, to bring her home.

As far as the choice being him or Hardison to go, Eliot had at least agreed with Nate’s decision to come in himself. Sophie had been harder to convince. _”I know you’re trying to be brave for all of us, but this is my playground, Nate. And I’ve spent more time with her over the years than you have. You don’t really know her, how do you expect to reach her?”_

Unable to find the words or the heart to explain that he did know Parker – better than any of them – Nate had pulled rank on her in the end. All the conversations and heartfelt exchanges in the world weren’t going to change the fact that he knew his people, knew what made them tick, knew the workings of their minds.

He was the only one of them with a chance of submerging into the depths of Parker’s mind and the two of them coming out whole.

Then he’d told them he was going in without comms. “We have no idea what Duquesne did to her,” he argued as the three of them closed ranks against him. “I’m going to have to follow that thread wherever it leads if I want to have a shot at bringing her back. I can’t do that if I have the rest of you giving me advice the whole time.”

He’d agreed to Hardison taking control of the security feeds so they could watch him with Parker, but that was as far as he was willing to go. Anything horrible enough to steal Parker away from them like this was going to be painful enough to listen to. The rest of them needed the luxury of being able to walk away.

“I really hope you can reach her, doc,” the resident escorting him said, abruptly jarring Nate from his memories. “Somebody really did a number on this little girl. Be nice if we can get enough information for the police to make an arrest.”

Nate made a noncommittal noise that he hoped sounded like he agreed. Arrest wasn’t in Duquesne’s future, but that wasn’t information he was free to share with a civilian. “You bring her home,” had been one of the last things Eliot said to him before he left. “Whole or in pieces, whatever you can do – then that bastard belongs to me.”

He could have made the argument for Hardison having the better claim of revenge, but knew that Eliot had already taken that into consideration. If Hardison wanted a slice of the doomed arms dealer, Eliot would move heaven and earth to see that he got it…and Nate and Sophie would never know the details.

“Signal the camera if you need anything,” the resident said, swiping his card over the electronic door lock. “We won’t come in unless you call for it, or unless she gets violent with you.”

It was a qualification he didn’t want, but Nate knew there was no way he was going to argue the hospital staff out of it. _Just have to talk fast,_ he thought, while outwardly agreeing to everything the resident was telling him.

For all his protestations to the team and himself that he could handle the sight of his thief in this condition, the reality of what had happened to Parker froze Nate in his tracks just inside the door. Rage like he hadn’t known since his father’s murder gripped him, and he knew that whatever it took to convince Eliot he was going to have a piece of Jacques Duquesne all for himself before this was done.

 _”You bring her home. Whole or in pieces, whatever you can do.”_  
***********************************************  
Everything hurt. It was the only truth Duquesne had left her in the end – broken bones, bruises so deep they were only now starting to fade, and…other things that turned her heart to ice in her chest and her thoughts to white noise every time she got too close to the memory.

_”You belong to the one strong enough to keep you.”_

Thirteen days and forty-two minutes in, they put a set of plans in front of her. Blood dripped from her fingers as she traced the numbers and tried to make sense of them. She never did learn what they wanted her to do with the plans – Duquesne screamed at her for a while, but words had stopped making sense after the third beating…or was it the fourth when they broke her little finger?

Then the demon came and the world went white again.

_“First National Bank of Boston. Two million in uncut diamonds in safety deposit box 412. How do you get them?”_

Her head came up sharply as his words penetrated the haze of pain and loss that clouded her world. “Supply duct into the box vault has laser grids at either end. Use mirrors to reflect the beams back on themselves, then the drop into the vault is easy. Locks on the box have to be picked at exactly the same sequence, or they won’t open. Three to five minutes in and out, depending on whether you take the box or not.”  
********************************************  
Empathy wasn’t the answer. One of the most deeply held secrets Nate held about Parker was that the thief had never outgrown certain childish responses – the more he tried to focus on the horrors that had been catalogued in her medical file, the more terrified and non-responsive she would become.

He needed to pull out the truths that were written on her bones – the things she had used over the years to define herself to herself.

“Tell me how you stole the second David statue.” Next to no prep time, security that would have given anyone else in the world pause – it was still Nate’s personal favorite of all of Parker’s heists.

Her spine stiffened at that. “I didn’t steal the second David statue. Sophie did.” Her voice caught on the name, but some of the light that was so uniquely Parker had come back into her eyes.

In spite of the seriousness of the moment, Nate smiled at how easily she’d caught his entirely unintentional slip. “My mistake,” he acknowledged. “How did you steal the _first_ David statue?”

Her voice was definitely stronger as she began to recount the story, and Nate felt some of his own tension ease as her words tumbled into the silence and bound the two of them together.  
*******************************  
The demon had poured poison into her soul – a cloud of it rose up in her mind as she recounted stealing an eight and a half million dollar statue on five minutes’ notice. _”Archie used to you steal for him. Nate Ford used you to steal for him. Ralph Harrigan used you for other things…”_ The threads of her story began to slide through her broken fingers, and she couldn’t move fast enough to stop them. _”People don’t value you any more than a carpenter values a nail. You are means to an end, whether that end is a priceless treasure, or a few moments of sexual gratification.”_

“Parker, how did you distract the guard at the stairwell?”

The voice was like a soft blanket against the worst of her hurts, and she clung to it with everything she was and everything she had. Memory of grabbing Hardison and kissing him with all the enthusiasm she’d ever seen two people kiss shone in her thoughts before _…a few moments of sexual gratification…_ wiped it out of her reach.

Her heart skipped a painful beat – the image was gone, but a tiny spark of doubt had been left in its wake. _She_ had grabbed _Hardison_ , didn’t that mean she had used him?

“How did you handle the laser grid?” Just in time, the voice gave her a safe place to go away from the interpersonal stuff. Parker seized on the opening gratefully – launching into the tale of how she’d used aluminum foil Hardison swiped off the buffet table to defeat the last line of defense protecting one of the most famous statues in the world.

“That was very clever of you,” the voice said. “You must be very smart.”

The unexpected praise was like a blow to her stomach – Parker could feel herself shrinking again, feeling the white noise filling her ears. “I’m a tool,” she muttered, hugging her knees so tightly to her chest it was hard to breathe. “People use me for what they need.”  
******************************  
Privately Nate swore he was going to have the largest piece of Duquesne when Eliot finally brought him down. After this, he doubted anyone was going to argue that he’d earned it. “Parker, tools can’t think for themselves. You were the one that planned that heist. Nobody else.”

She raised her head again, and he breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “Nate was too drunk,” she said.

Instead of being offended, her blunt assessment made him smile again. _There you are._ A little piece of his thief was peeking out from all the emotional debris at last. “Nate couldn’t have planned that stone cold sober,” he countered. “Not with the time and material restrictions involved. He left it up to you because he knew you’d help him.”

Tears quivered in her eyes now. He suspected she was starting to let herself believe it was really him, but kept to his course of action – not wanting to do anything to threaten the tenuous connection they’d managed to establish between them. “We all wanted to help Nate on that job. He deserved revenge on his old boss.”

“You always help, though,” Nate said, pressing what little advantage he had. “No matter whether Nate is drunk or lost or angry, you always help him. He doesn’t appreciate nearly enough how special you are.”

“You’re always sorry when you make mistakes,” Parker said softly, really looking at him for the first time since he’d spoken.

Nate allowed himself a small smile. “I am, but I never seem to tell you guys. And I should.”

The thief’s smile grew. “You should. But you’re getting better.”

Nate started to answer her, but something nudged him free of the ebb and flow between them. “Wait – when did this turn into making me feel better?”

She exhaled softly and Nate saw the tension start to slowly bleed out of her system. “I knew you would come. I never stopped believing you would bring me home.” She swallowed hard, her gaze ticking down briefly, then up again. “That is why you’re here, right? I want to go home, Nate.” She reached across the space that separated him, and he took her hand. “Please take me home.”

Tears in his own eyes now, Nate squeezed her hand reassuringly and let her see every bit of the conviction he felt as he said, “Just let them try and stop me.”


End file.
